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PREFACE Agriculture has been a mainstay of human being since time immemorial. Agriculture in any form has been practiced in those areas where men have been living permanently. They have been restrained from plundering and or indiscriminate hunting rather domesticated a number of facultative organisms. They have been utilizing their diligence and intelligence to integrate natural germplasms of plants and animals with natural resources like land, light, air and other biotic and abiotic factors of production to produce usable products directly or after processing by their own muscle power or any aid found in nature or developed by them for ease, cheap and swiftness. Agricultural development is multidirectional having galloping speed and rapid spread with respect to time and space. After the introduction of modern varieties of various durations with improved plant types along with improvement of input resources, farmers started using improved cultural practices in intensive cropping systems with labour-intensive programmes to improve production potential per unit land, time and input. A large number of alternate genotypes are available to the farmers. Agronomists provided suitable environment to these genotypes to foster them and to manifest their yield potential in newer areas and seasons. Dealing with various types of soils and climatic conditions is a pre-requisite to grow crops. Understanding of relationships between crop plants and natural and manmade factors of production is a guideline to provide better environment to crop plants and to increase useefficiency of these factors. A wide spectrum knowledge of soil, water, nutrients, weeds etc. helps to manage them efficiently in favour of crop production for years. A comprehensive idea on seeds and their handling, sowing and planting of different crop varieties under different agro-climatic conditions, cropping pattern and cropping systems helps to raise crops together or one after another considering prevailing conditions and available facilities. Modern concept on improved cropping system is found to be successful in shifting the direction of agricultural practices from crop oriented one to system oriented approach. Modern agro-techniques on crop production, protection and preservation have opened the opportunities to absorb, adapt and apply new knowledge and technology to the farmers. Recently introduced methods of cropping also approach diversified farming systems with components complementary to each other. Non-traditional crops with respect to zone and season showed their promise. All these have declined the earlier traditional agriculture and established the scientific agribusiness. India, with one of the biggest scientific manpower of the world, made a spectacular increase in its food grains production, after independence, especially after late sixties, when the country ushered into the world famous Green Revolution . The Green Revolution is manifested of the advances made in the agricultural sciences and can be summed up in three words, 1 seeds High yielding Varieties , 2 water, and 3 fertilizers. The management of the last two factors of production, with a view to achieving the production potential of the first, i.e., High yielding varieties seeds is exclusively an agronomic domain. The future of Indian agriculture depends on the development of appropriate farming system as applicable to resource poor farm families and as suited to different agroecological zones. Restricting the use of purchased inputs in farming could be achieved through multiple cropping and diversified farming including animal husbandry, forestry, dairy, duckery, fisheries, apiary, sericulture, etc. The demand must be met from limited resources such as land, water, energy and labour. Increasing food supplies with limited natural resources is a great challenge to the scientific communities. Under this situation, Integrated Farming System IFS seems to be the answer, considering the current scenario in agriculture in India. Besides, facilitating cash income and increased employment

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